The Role of Side Entrees in German Age-Group Swimming

INTRODUCTION Every nation aims to send successful athletes to international top events. For this reason national swimming associations provide multi-year training plans to operate long term development for identified young talents. To quantifythe role of side-entrees (new-comers at progressed developmental level, male > age 15, female > age 14) into German Age Group Swimming a longitudinal investigation of careers was made.METHODS To examine the rate of lateral entrees into German competitive swimming the 100 best age-group swimming performances (long course) of eight subsequent years (2004-2013) were analyzed. Here the focus was on the age-groups 1993 - 1995 (male n = 1.862; female n = 1.993). The athletes were assigned to one of the following groups: Survivors (athletes who remained in the rankings in all previous years), Returnees (athletes who had at least one year without ranking and made itback into the top 100) and Newcomers (athletes who got ranked for the first time). RESULTS The Newcomer rate for male swimmers decreased within the ages of 12-14 years in boys (23,1%; 16,7%; 12,3%), stabelizes over the ages 15-17 (10,97% ± 0,12%) and increases again at the age of 18 (14,5%). For girls the rate decreases as well from 12-14 years (20%; 14,3%; 12,3%), stabalizes at age 15/16 (14,0% ± 0,7%) and increases earlier than the rate of boys at the age of 17 (15,4%) until 18 (21,3%). DISCUSSION We conclude that there are only a few continuous carriers among German age-group-swimmers. The role of side-entrees increases with progression of development. The rates decrease in the same age-groups of male and female swimmers but increase one year earlier for the girls. Future research should analyse the qualitative role of these Newcomers. REFERENCES Côté, J.et. al (2007). Handbook of sport psychologyEricsson, A. K. et. al. (1993). Psychological ReviewGüllich, A. (2013). Sport Güllich, A., & Emrich, E. (2012). European Journal for Sport and Society